Grace licked her lips and thought hard about what would make her panic, what would scare her. Looking at Max so earnest and responsible, she struggled to bring anything to mind.
“I . . . don’t like being held down,” she said gently, recollecting the previous night. “As you saw with Buck, I can’t handle being— I get claustrophobic.” She pulled her hair over her shoulder. “I need to be able to move my hands.”
“Understood. What else?”
Her heart skipped as a memory of her and Rick flashed through her psyche. His angry voice, her tears, his hands on her head holding her to his body. “This may be another deal breaker for you.” She closed her eyes, not wanting to see Max’s face while she spoke. “I don’t, I can’t . . . go down—I don’t like it.” She opened her eyes slowly. Max’s expression hadn’t changed. “He wasn’t— Rick wasn’t kind when I did it . . .”
A muscle in Max’s jaw jumped and his gaze burned hot. “I get it,” he said softly. “And I can live with that.” He paused before the corner of his mouth lifted wolfishly. “Do you like it being done to you?”
Grace coughed. “I, um, I don’t—I can, um, yeah, I don’t mind.”
Max laughed, his face regaining its usual gentleness. “Good to know.”
Grace chuckled, too. The tension in the room lifted around them. “So, are we gonna do this?”
His grin dropped. “As long as you know that I can’t give you any more than—”
“It’s just sex. I get it,” Grace interrupted with mock exasperation. “Seriously, dude, you’re not that hot. You’d think you had a whole gaggle of women following you around declaring their undying love!”
Max barked out a laugh, his cheeks pinking adorably. He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous gesture to which Grace was becoming accustomed.
She stuck out her hand. “Shall we shake on it, just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding? That we’re just two friends helping each other out.” Confusion flitted across Max’s face. “Oh, please.” Grace laughed. “You need this as much as I do. I don’t care what you say.” He narrowed his gaze but didn’t respond. “Deal?” she asked.
He looked from her eyes to her hand and back again, before he took it and squeezed gently. “Deal.”
“You seem tense,” Elliot noted as he wrote on his legal pad.
Max shifted under his shrink’s all-knowing stare.
“You wanna tell me about it?”
“Not really.”
The truth was, since Max had decided to help Grace with her . . . intimacy problem, he’d been feeling all sorts of chaotic. The day after the deal was agreed to, Grace left for DC. Following her panic attack, she’d arranged an emergency appointment with her therapist. She also wanted to spend a little time with her brother, which suited Max just fine.
A bit of space before the inevitable could only be a good idea, right?
He exhaled heavily and clasped the bridge of his nose. Seriously, he was losing his damned mind if he thought he needed space from Grace. If anything, he’d missed seeing her the two days she was away. His run wasn’t nearly as fun on his own. It wasn’t space he needed. It was the chance to contemplate what their agreement meant. And after he’d contemplated, ruminated, and brooded like the motherfucker he was for forty-eight hours, he conceded that the mere thought of fucking Grace left him in a cold sweat.
It was crazy. He’d had sex before, for Christ’s sake. A lot of sex before, and he’d never analyzed it as much as he had for the last seven days. He’d had women of all ages, sizes, and races, and enjoyed them, but Grace was different. Things with Grace were different. She wasn’t some broad he’d picked up in a bar and never thought about seeing again. She was a friend.
Once Grace had returned from DC, looking and sounding more relaxed, they’d fallen back into their old routine. They ran, talked, and hung out at her house, even when Max wasn’t working. He helped her paint, hung more pictures, and even took her to the local garden center to look at plants she wanted for the place. Things were just as they’d been before she left, except, they weren’t. Because, in all the time they’d spent together since they’d shaken hands, neither one of them had made a move.
Not one.
Not a light touch, a lingering glance, or even a fuck it, let’s get down to it.
Nothing.
Max had thought about it. Jesus, how he’d thought about it. He’d watched her work behind the bar, and he’d watched her run, but now he imagined what it would be like to touch her under that skirt she wore at Whiskey’s, or even taste the sweat that trickled down the sides of her face as they ran. He listened to her laugh, watched her throw her head back, and wondered if she’d do the same when she came.
Yeah, “tense” was a great word for it. It’d been a long time since his cock had taken such an active role in his day-to-day life. Ever since his body recognized Grace as no longer off-limits, it had been more than willing to “help” her out whenever she needed.